Extraterrestrial Life324 articles archived since 1845

Scientists have found ancient "impact glass" on the surface of Mars, which formed when asteroids struck, a billion or more years ago. If anything was alive at the time, biological materials could be trapped inside. Christopher Intagliata reports

Two prominent scientists update our view of the history of life on Earth, featuring the prominent roles of oxygen and carbon dioxide, and question claims that it is fairly easy to initiate life—even on a planet such as ours

New evidence points to the evolution of the ability for bacteria to grab nitrogen from the atmosphere some 3.2 billion years ago, about 1.2 billion years earlier than thought—with implications for finding extraterrestrial life. Lee Billings reports

Scientific American is part of Springer Nature, which owns or has commercial relations with thousands of scientific publications (many of them can be found at www.springernature.com/us). Scientific American maintains a strict policy of editorial independence in reporting developments in science to our readers.